Sunday, September 30, 2007

Nice late dinner, feasted on roasted vegetables & local chorizo, complex, spicy, magically delicious. Walked with Peretz by the paper after, high half moon, he was pulling even more vigorously than normal, a little hyper from being home alone so long, I imagine. Chilly night.

So tired that it's taking a bit of the edge off anxieties, will probably come back in full force once asleep, that's what usually happens anyway. Going to defer that a little by reading some more of second rate scifi novel I picked up the other day, strange fanciful conception of time travel, not how it actually is at all.

Got back from trip to Salem Willows a little while ago, if there was skee ball available in my immediate area, I think I'd be a lot happier & more sane.

Oscillations between terrible worry and engaged contentment are so rapid lately that it's rather like watching two superimposed films, can pay attention to one or the other pretty much as fancy, if that's what you call it, strikes me.

Busy day, went for dim sum, walked around a lot after, took a lot of pictures, went to show in town after, ended up playing at that after all, took a lot more pictures, going to walk the dog, then go to Joe's for pizza, I think.

Made my throat a bit scratchy screaming hoarsely at show, could use another beverage.

Same time last year was doing my best to get somebody else through a difficult time, doing the same for myself now. Not really much difference in terms of dedication, level of effort, attention to detail, etc.- can act pretty much the same whether or not I actually care about something if I think it's necessary.

Local BBQ update. Maybe they can learn to make pork sandwiches properly before they reopen. Nothing against the folks, the other stuff there was great, but the swishing shoulder in sauce before serving business needs to stop.

Looked like rain all day yesterday, didn't rain until the instant I got on 91 to go the airport. Pretty torrential, driving through Springfield, invisible lane markers, drifting trucks.

Wasn't raining at Bradley, thought it might any time, so parked in garage, rather than lot by Terminal B, found that sole corridor between Terminals A & B was closed due to renovation. Had to walk over outside, not really much of an outside path either.

Very claustrophobic experience, Terminal B. American Airlines Arrivals/Departures screens spend 2/3 of the time showing ads for American Airlines rather than information, expect they'll be going under soon.

On drive home, heard about my brother's business a bit, got here, fed him beer & healthy vegetables & scotch. Talked about other stuff, he showed me some interesting details of maps.

Had some very nasty nightmares, not nasty enough to wake me up, but nasty enough that I found I had knocked over my bedside lamp when I finally did. Just removed bulb shards with shopvac, will extract remainder of bulb from socket later.

Thursday, September 27, 2007

Thinking about web apps I'd like to see, maybe they already exist, I've been pretty busy and pretty upset, so I haven't been keeping up as well as I might.

One thing I'm interested in is trying to generate metadata about arbitrary data sets by collecting rich information about the relations between objects in the data set. I guess I'm thinking about something like free tagging only applied to relations between objects rather than the objects themselves. Something like an extreme generalization of the 'Am I Hot or Not?' variety of site might be a fun way to do this. Allow users to submit arbitrary objects and some relations between them. If we're restricting ourselves to dyadic relations, users could be presented with object pairs and asked whether they relate in a given way, if the relation is such as to apply to the object pair in question at all, etc. If done properly, I'm pretty sure, the relation semantics could be enriched in a similar way with more complex scenarios designed to determine if relations are commutative, symmetrical, etc.

Another thing I'd like is a project/collaboration-oriented social network, I'm thinking a framework for proposing projects, collecting members & funding, providing communications & planning infrastructure, canned work flows for a variety of organizational structures, etc. This seems like an obvious thing to do & something worth doing, so it seems like somebody should've done it already, but I'm not aware of it. It may be just that design for project planning/management apps is still very oriented to the technical user. There might be something to learn from the proliferation of to do list type apps out there.

Anyway, as I say, I'm very busy & upset, could somebody put together mockups & get back to me?

My brother's plane is running a little late, glad I'm not working tomorrow.

House shopping process is pretty interesting. Get the impression that everyone else is more emotionally invested in it than I am. How it is with most things I guess. Things capture my imagination & I can see a lot of possibilities, but I can do that with a lot of different things. Very different with people, almost all of them, I find totally uninteresting; the ones I find interesting, I'd do most any damn thing for. Think this is something about me that confuses people. Feels very natural to me.

Hey, T, if you ever get back from whatever party you're currently attending, you should really try roasting some vegetables, write for details.

Squash & spinach remarkably delicious, seller rejected my offer on property outright, sounds like they feel certain of getting more than I think they will in the present market, if they can, more power to them. May revisit the issue in a few months if nothing else interesting pops up.

Listening to more Au Pairs, 'Sex Without Stress', funny, sweaty from all the cooking.

Reading the Wikipedia entry on the Gordian Knot, funny to always be wending one's way through partially unknown associative networks. Like this bit, for example:

"The knot may in fact have been a religious knot-cipher guarded by Gordium's priests and priestesses. Robert Graves suggested that it may have symbolized the ineffable name of Dionysus that, enknotted like a cipher, would have been passed on through generations of priests and revealed only to the kings of Phrygia."

Was just talking about heritability of mental/cognitive disorders with my boss, my dad's dyslexia, my problems with knots. Good at untying them, understanding them, lousy at tying them.

Sitting at my desk at work shaking, been too busy to take a walk, my realtor is coming by shortly to get a deposit check from me, have me sign some paperwork. Really want to be in the dark, curled in a ball, with Peretz.

Press release on PTSD prevalence caught in the spam filter, making me cry.

Excerpt:

"...seek immediate help if you notice the following symptoms:

*Constantly overreacting and responding to things with more intense emotion than the situation actually calls for* Nightmares, hypervigilance, anxiety, depression, flashbacks* Being flooded by feelings over which you seem to have little or no control* Suddenly feeling as though the other person is "the bad guy" and that you have been tricked or duped and are in great peril* A large split between your intellectual awareness and your emotional response"

Letter in the paper today from lady sickened by front page photo of Hampshire Prez Ralph Hexter & his husband, simultaneously proclaiming her tolerance for all & wondering why people neglect the Bible, why such content isn't hidden discretely in the back pages if published at all.

Made me think of the curse of Ham.

Made me think of the angry, pinch-faced little old ladies inevitably present in films of civil rights marches.

Made me think of sermon from Greenwood, Mississippi, 1956:

“There is room in Heaven for all people,” said he. “There is a place for good white people. And there is a place for colored folks. They have their own separate Heaven, and it is just as good as ours.”

Drinking coffee, thinking about complex systems. As I maintain some for a living, I think about them a lot. There are an awful lot of them all around us, interacting with us & one another. Our politics & social thinking seem to have a lot of difficulty acknowledging this, a lot of cutting of Gordian knots, makes a mess.

Thinking about this, how genuinely inevitable it seems, wondering what can be done about it. It's not like nothing is being done about it, the high degree of specialization in our society is a way of dealing with it, among other things, makes its own messes.

Copies of Desk Set & Infrastructure: A Field Guide to the Industrial Landscape have arrived. Plans for later include roasting Hubbard, perhaps making a pie with some of the roasted Hubbard, perusing Infrastructure: A Field Guide to the Industrial Landscape, watching Desk Set. Plans for now include walking dog, going to Amherst to check config of workstations, going to Greenfield to install printer drivers. Should probably also pick up coffee.

Reading on paper's site about Easthampton zoning board's allowing some children to keep their pet chickens. Makes me feel better about the possibility of moving there. They want to be together.

Moving forward on property purchase, need to go hand over a deposit check, sign an offer at some point. Almost exactly like a grownup. Sounds like we're going to aim for a closing date of November 30th, so if I end up doing that, I imagine I won't be going anywhere for Thanksgiving, Xmas, will be using remaining vacation in December to move.

The snapshot thing is getting a bit excessive, Big E photos. Think I may be done with photographing fairs & festivals for the year, though the Ashfield Fall Festival does have its temptations.

Some things I do may seem like morbid dwelling on the past, they're not actually that at all, reinscription, reinterpretation, renewal. Palimpsest. Layered, dynamic, strong & capable, those are the facts.

It's been a full lunar year since experience of extreme natural beauty mentioned but not really described here. Still reeling.

I say it's indescribable there, but here's an outline, pretty done with the ineffable: spent the day exploring the Connecticut coast with a friend, over course of day, it became increasingly clear that we were in love with one another. At sunset, we were walking on the beach at Harkness State Park, holding hands. Once it got dark, we left the beach & headed across the grounds back to car. I noticed the full moon rising over the sound to my right, we walked toward it, looming orange over the boathouse. We gave one another a hug. Sounds of distant party in large house on park grounds. Beloved friend said, "I wish things were different." Watched moon some more, then headed back toward car. Young deer wandered across our path, stopped & looked at us quietly for a while, then wandered off.

Perhaps it's understandable that I tried very hard to make things different? Beyond my abilities apparently, not the least bit sorry to have tried.

Last.fm finally got around to generating my neighbors & bang!- there's my pal poppybird. Several strange things about that, first of all it shows our musical compatibility as 'very low', which aside from being a lot of nonsense, shows, I think, that they use different algorithms for compatibility & proximity. Also the neighbor relation is asymmetric (tell me about it), maybe the compatibility one isn't? Also, she appears to have stopped listening to music altogether, preferring to spend weekends watching adventures of girl detective. I assume & hope she's just using a different app for music playback these days. Also hope she gets out in the sunshine sometimes, think it'd do her a world of good.

Decided I'd had enough of ridiculous product line differentiation & have put Peretz on a different feed. Trying Dave's Soda & Pet Food City natural house brand, he seems to like it, scarfing it down now. We'll see how it goes. Wet food is probably the next logical step, still feel a bit resistant.

Think I'm too fuzzy from sustained anxiety episode to focus on the Big E as much as it deserves, maybe tomorrow.

So, Schmetterlingfotographie deferred to a later date due to time constraints, did go out the Mohawk Trail a bit in search of kitsch, pretty fun. Forgot to get Peretz needed food, going to make him a special ham, rice & pumpkin dinner in a bit, I think.

Pots & pans didn't take anyway near as long as I expected, decided to bathe Peretz sooner than later, have done so, he wasn't very happy with me, seems cheerful enough now, hope it makes him less itchy.

Watching cartoons, more than a little tired & worried. Should probably just go to sleep, have the inevitable bad dreams, get up again. Planning to just let that happen for the next few months. It's not really a very big deal.

Drifting off while typing, imagining things are moving just out of sight.

So, reinterpretation of Yom Kippur as ham feast holiday duly accomplished, two years in a row = official ritual as far as I'm concerned. Ham, roasted produce all very tasty, touch of sherry vinegar brought out sweetness of the root vegetables nicely.

'But, dbr', you may say, 'you taunted G-d in this very same fashion last year & look how that turned out.'

Sure, sure, there's something of a point in what you say. I, on the other hand, say, 'Bring it on, fucker.'

Henry got here, we went to Amherst for breakfast, ate a lot of pork products, went to Yale Genton, got fitted for tuxes, went by coveted property, looked at it, neighborhood, went to Outlook, got Yom Kippur ham, sundries.

Peretz is glad we're back.

Formal wear business was surprisingly painless, rental is surprisingly cheap.

Thinking about http, it's remarkable how easily people can come to see extremely contingent things as normal & natural. Cascading consequences of design decisions, trying to come up with good ways to explain those, not that anybody's going to ask. Document delivery v. application delivery, to do that you have to explain the difference between an application and a document, is there one?

Did some dishes, made a half a pot of coffee, took P for a walk, thinking about cookery, how astonishingly much I can get done when I feel like it. Should probably try harder to maximize time spent in situations that make me feel like it, there's a lot to be done. Anyway, plans, projects, working on it, calculating, that's me, work out all the angles, then strike.

Sky empty of everything but half moon and remarkable gradients, going to have a cup of joe, then walk around town by myself for a while.

Going through Don Norman recommended reading list, tons of stuff I'd like to read, this one is particularly appealing but way too expensive, local research library doesn't carry it, not welcome there in any case.

Sounds like Henry may be up here in the morning rather than late tonight, looking forward to seeing him, dreading the formal wear shopping. Wishing all the things I was dreading were silly crap like that.

Struck me as a bit parochial, library science tends to be a bit that way, I guess.

One thing that jumped out at me was a tendency to differentiate between cataloguers and users, this seems like a really bad idea. The way I look at it, anybody who uses a system is a user, that includes the developers, the admins, the people entering data, the people retrieving data. Not having a clear sense of all likely use cases and user types is a recipe for bad design. A priori assumptions that there being different use cases and user types implies necessary tradeoffs in favor of one or another are a recipe for bad design. There are always going to be tradeoffs due to resource limitations, but the overarching design goal needs to stay optimal usability for all user types in all use cases, any deviation from that should require careful thought and pulling of teeth.

Another thing that bothered me was the idea that centralization of services somehow entailed the death of the library. Libraries are basically information repositories, if the goal is information dissemination, networked repositories are always to be preferred to standalone ones. I think the anxiety is much more about efficiencies equalling redundancies than the demise of the library or the OPAC. Jobs aren't sinecures, folks, the tempo's increasing all the time, we can learn to dance to it & have fun or stand around looking sullen getting our toes stepped on.

Overall impression coming away from this article: librarians would really benefit from closer collaboration with developers & systems people. If there's ice needing to be broken, I suggest getting together informally, having a few drinks & watching Desk Set.

Work's all done, introduced coworkers to fish 'n' chips shop, considering returning bottles & fetching more soda, was thinking of going down there with my brother next week, might rather have more soda now.

Head's full of sadness & poetry.

How should one react when people who ought to know better decide you're Evil with a big E? It's mostly with worry & pity in my case, also a bit flattered to be ascribed such mythic status, thought of as anything involving a big E. Not sure that's the best way to react, but it's mine.

Thinking about computers in the movies, it's not so much that they're gotten all wrong, it's that there are nowhere near as many of them as in real life. Probably because they're not sufficiently dramatic. They're actually pretty dramatic.

I've been working on a Scrabble variant, Burns Scrabb'e, the idea, pretty much, is to use the works of the poet Robert Burns as the canonical reference. Ideally, this would involve the addition of a number of apostrophe tiles, in order to facilitate play with a standard set, I've generated a word list from a Gutenberg etext of the poems & songs of Burns which omits apostrophes. I guess my question for you folks is, do you have any plans for implementing support of user-supplied dictionaries? I've really been enjoying your app, being able to use it to play Burns Scrabb'e would make it all the more wonderful. Sorry about the load issues.

Thanks,

dbr"

"Hello,

Please note that dictionaries for this game are different from regular dictionaries.

Some words maybe present in them which are not found in your normal dictionaries (and vice versa). It is not possible to change these dictionaries as most players are used to these versions.

Day's last walk with Peretz, half moon behind the trees. Of two minds about most everything, each of those of two minds about something else. Sounds a bit exaggerated, that's true enough, it's also just how it is.

Some changes of plans, got more hot dogs rather than more fish 'n' chips (Tramore's got quite a good deal on those- 2 dogs, fries & a soda for four bucks), decided I couldn't face Ingleside, went to KMart instead, some things just won't die. More run down every time I go, didn't carry deluxe Scrabble™ of course, got folio travel kind instead.

Talked to Andy for a while while eating hot dogs, shared concerns about lack of venues, nice old buildings being neglected, etc., etc.

The rules of Burns Scrabb'e are the rules of Scrabble™ with the following additions & modifications:

1) The canonical reference for the settling of challenges is the copy of the works of the poet Robert Burns in closest physical proximity to the players. The onus is on the challenged player to produce an example of Burns's use of the challenged word from this copy. Only text presented as from the pen of Burns himself may be cited in defense. In the case of ambiguity with regard to physical proximity (e.g., one player is in closer proximity to one edition of the works of Burns, another to another), the authoritative volume is to be determined by the age of the editions, with the older presiding. In the case of works of indeterminate or equal antiquity, the edition with the higher page count is to be used. Should this criterion also fail to decide the matter, the authoritative work is to be determined by the toss of a coin, with the challenging playing calling & the challenged flipping. In no case are translations or editions employing modernized spelling to be used.

2) All words which can be shown to flow from the pen of Burns are allowed, this includes contractions (see rule 3, below), proper nouns & words of a single letter. In the case of words of a single letter, when such a word is played onto an existing word, the single letter word is also to be scored.

3) Either a standard English Scrabble™ set or a regulation Burns Scrabb'e set may be employed, in any given tournament, all sets must be of a single type. A Burns Scrabb'e set differs from the standard by the addition of ten one point apostrophe tiles to the standard hundred. In play with a standard English set, words written by Burns with one or more apostrophes may be played with the apostrophes omitted, in the case of a Burns set, their use is mandatory.

So, letter frequency in Burns looks to be within shooting distance of letter frequency in English, could probably play with a standard set, around ten extra apostrophe tiles would be ideal, lacking that, I've generated a preliminary lexicon from a Project Gutenberg etext of the Poems & Songs of Robert Burns (etext #1279) stripped of Gutenberg boilerplate & glossary which omits the apostrophes. You can get that here. This is merely a handy reference guide, challenges should still be adjudicated by reference to the nearest copy of the works of Burns. Also it's machine-generated & I've haven't yet proofread it, so your mileage may vary.

Macaroni bake came out far tastier than anticipated, very glad I thought to buy sherry, brought together the garlic, onion, bacon, chard, cheese flavors very nicely. Discussed it with my brother on IM, he asked that I reserve some for him in the freezer, have done so, enjoying food afterglow. Advising T on cookery on cell, she's making that fried rice, hope it comes out good, makes me happy.

Going to spend an hour spacing out, then have a bowl of Snow's ice cream.

Went & got coffee, cheese for macaroni bake (last minute change to appenzeller), fancy scotch, cheap cooking sherry, donuts. Exhaustion has been leading to some nice quasi-mystical states, pushing that along with donuts & coffee. Given how worried I've been the past little while, I figure the more time I spend in dissociated, ecstatic states the better.

Thinking of putting Big E on hold till next week, think I'm just too tired to really enjoy it much.

On my foggy walk along the levee with P, devoted a good deal of the time I wasn't spending generating elaborate self parodies to thinking about Euler's Number. Sometimes get the feeling that I should really be learning more math & languages, never seem to get to it. Both tend to make me feel a lot better when I can manage to apply myself to them, should work on that, probably.

Went & had more Tramore Fish 'n' Chips, also tried one of their hot dogs, deep-fried Blue Seal brand, they don't have kraut but very tasty nonetheless. Had longish chat with owner, suggested he start carrying Harmony Springs in the 12 oz bottle.

Went & had a look at former market, seems a good deal more livable & suitable for my likely purposes than former bakery, might actually buy it. Took pictures.

The former retail space downstairs is huge & there's straight through access through a two car garage, full of cars right now so the floor will support some serious weight, pretty much totally unfinished, though there is a nice though somewhat fucked up tin ceiling. Basement seems quite dry, might actually be suitable for storage and/or servers. Exterior street facing wall seems an ideal location for a mural, very large unbroken expanse of brick & concrete, a few wires & utility drops.

Latest info makes it sounds like it may have been Verizon itself, not excavators at all, that cut our T1. Apparently they were dropping in a line for the construction crew just as it went down. Lovely.

Monday, September 17, 2007

No joy from Verizon, told our isp we would have people on site till midnight, they told Verizon that, Verizon entered that into their system as 12 pm, wouldn't send a tech outside working hours, didn't call to tell me that or anything, by the time that was sorted out, they had no techs on duty, supposedly one will show up in the morning, we'll see.

Finally got home, took P for a walk, decided to warm up a bowl of soup, cut myself a slice of hearty multigrain bread to go with that, decided I should write my boss an update on situation, did that, went back to kitchen to get soup & bread, bread was gone.

Got to thinking about the possibilities of Hubbard pie, Scientology tie-ins, went to town to pump Cooper for idea, didn't have any really, got me to think of some anyway (melty marshmallow body thetans, meringue volcano top), but he did suggest doing a multicourse cult-themed dinner party. Ideas so far, adulterated grape FlavorAid (bit obvious, but clearly necessary), Blackened Kid Koresh, looking for more suggestions, obviously.

Not sure what's up with Big E, may go with Tim, him shooting video, me taking pictures, not yet confirmed.

Out with P, watching homeless folks shivering in the morning chill, thinking about the inadequacies of our responses to madness. Given the state of our knowledge, it tends to present a forced choice between various forms of neglect.

Also thinking, relatedly, about my efforts to attribute rationality to somebody who wasn't acting in a very rational-seeming way. I think, pretty much, that she had simply decided that she absolutely couldn't hurt another person anymore and all the incoherence flowed from trying to adjust things to that. As I'm pretty sure she caused the other person a great deal more long-term hurt by doing that, by creating a situation where he's never going to be able to get over his hurt, it's just another example of why one should never adopt absolute priorities. Really, complex situations are complex for a lot of reasons, simplifying them violently makes a horrible mess.

Been caused horrible damage by this myself, as has she, I'm sure. I have vastly better developed and more effective coping mechanisms than either of them, unfortunately.

OK, so rich inner life is intruding, unwelcome guest, doing my best to make it feel welcome anyway.

There are some things I desperately want to be doing but can't. This sounds pretty upsetting, but the plain fact is: they're so much better than the things I desperately wanted to be doing but couldn't previously that it's actually a vast improvement. See more possibilities, feel more motivated. We'll see what comes of it, I suppose.

Spacing out is winning over baking for the moment. Enjoying post-soup euphoria.

Hearty, rustic & extremely spicy vegetable & kielbasa soup simmering. Hearty enough that it's more of a stew, actually. In any case, that's another week of farm share dutifully transformed into tasty & nutritious food & no issue as to what to eat for the next few days unless I feel like having one. So a little sense of achievement, always nice.

Pics of property & surrounding neighborhood. Wrote my realtor about having a look at it. Strangely asking price is exactly the same as bakery, also across the street from a school, public elementary, though, not Catholic.

Noticed that another property of interest had come on the market in Easthampton, went & had a lot at its exterior, took pictures, walked around neighborhood, took more pictures. Looks a little dilapidated, but has some serious advantages over the old bakery, it's actually zoned commercial, looks like the commercial part is more usable for things I might want to use it for, like the neighborhood better, looks like somebody actually lives there, so it's probably livable. The street it's on looks good & ready for a minor commercial renaissance, might be a fun thing to try to do with some of my spare time.

Went to Big E's after & got my staples, also a spicy locally made kielbasa to use in my soup, presumably the meat in that is also locally sourced. Really like that store, it's a longish but easy walk from newly coveted property.

Thinking in the shower about how strange it's been to be attributed Svengali-like powers &, I suppose, attitudes.

Just plain don't have either.

It's true that, as a youth, there were occasions when I acted more sympathetic & interested in others than I actually was in order to gain what I imagined was an advantage with them, didn't like the situations that got me into, these days I usually act less sympathetic & interested than I actually am, if anything.

A problem with understanding other people reasonably well is that it makes it possible to feign sympathy & interest successfully. Another problem with it is that people are generally at best pretty ambivalent in their desire to be understood. In my experience, once they get a sense of what that's actually like, they turn & run as fast as possible.

Went into work to check into malfunctioning wireless router, turns out it's not malfunctioning at all, there's just another old one of ours plugged in somewhere in the building broadcasting the same SSID. Looked for it for a bit, couldn't find it. It's unfortunate that I didn't notice that I was in the wrong brand router's admin console while I was associated with the bad one as I could've just shut its damn wireless off, couldn't manage to pick it up again once I lost it. Anyway, explains a lot, imagine someone's put it out on the floor as a switch, would've thought the antennae would've been a dead giveaway myself, but what do I know?

Went to those festivals, well, tried anyway, Athol one was rescheduled due to rain, walked around & took pictures anyway. North Quabbin Garlic & Arts festival was kind of eh. Note to hippies: the dominant culture contains design sensibilities vastly more sophisticated and interesting than yours, look into that some time. Also, dreadful music, just dreadful, made me think of Emma Goldman. Lots of self-congratulatory eco-signs, quack therapies, overpriced produce, etc., etc. Did enjoy some tasty locally raised meat products.

Uploading pictures of all this now. Pictures from earlier here & here.

Such a beautiful day for driving around took 202 all the way down to Holyoke, came back up 5, sky, light in trees, sparkling river.

Took a walk with Peretz around back of paper, took photos of construction, went to record fair, took more photos, talked with Dooley. Uploading those now.

Drinking some more coffee, recharging camera battery, going to take another walk with P, then go to the Athol Fall Festival and take more pictures, hope they have fudge, got a request at record fair to pick up a garlic braid if I went to the garlic festival, will probably therefore do that also, take more pictures.

Plans for today have filled in nicely, Flywheel record fair in Eastworks, Athol Fall Festival, North Quabbin Garlic & Arts Festival in Orange, think I'm going to try to hit all three, take pictures, obviously most excited about the Athol one. Bit down that I missed the Williamsburg Grange Fair last weekend, dog was sick, matter of priorities.

Even the loveliest people do terrible things sometimes, sometimes it seems that it's the loveliest people who do the most terrible things, tempting to think that's just a matter of contrast, don't really think it is. People who give a lot of thought to what they do are a lot more likely to do terrible things on purpose, in full consciousness of just how terrible they actually are. Whether that's actually worse than people bumbling around hurting everyone around in an oblivious fog, I don't know, think it's almost certainly not, but it can certainly seem worse.

Just sent T a couple highly discounted hard anodized aluminum pans as a housewarming gift.

Picked the free shipping, so it might be a while, dear. I'll keep you posted.

Also, here's how I make that fried rice with kale you like:

You need 8 oz of bacon (that's half a package, generally, though you can often get 8 oz packages also), a bunch of kale (usually sold in bunches), a nice thick 2-3 inch piece of ginger, 3 cloves of garlic, soy sauce, sesame oil, chili paste (I usually use Lan Chi chili paste with garlic, but others will work, try to get one with little or no sugar), a cup and a half of rice. Sherry or white wine could also be nice in this if you happen to have any.

So, start cooking the rice, meanwhile peel the ginger & garlic, mince, wash the kale and strip the leaves from the stems, discard the stems and either chop or hand shred the leaves into smallish pieces, chop the bacon into smallish pieces, by the time you've done all that your rice is probably done, set it aside.

Heat about a tablespoon of sesame oil in a wok over medium high heat, once the oil is hot, add the bacon, stirring until it is nicely browned and crispy, add the ginger and garlic and a rounded teaspoon or so of chili paste, stir for about a minute, add a 1/4 cup of soy sauce (also a 1/4 cup of wine if you're using it), stir until the liquid is boiling vigorously (this will happen quickly), add the kale (this may be a little unmanageable at first, depending on the size of your wok, you might want to cover the wok briefly to steam the kale so it will shrink and become easier to stir), stir until the kale is cooked (this won't take very long, but longer than some other greens, it's also harder to overcook, so don't worry too much about it), with the wok still on the heat, mix in the rice and stir it around until everything is nicely mixed, taste for salt, if it's not salty enough for you, add a little more soy sauce and mix some more.

Went & got that burger from Look Restaurant I'd wanted to get on Labor Day, not hungry enough for pie. Had been thinking of maybe walking around in industrial zone by the Mill River after, taking pictures, was just too tired. Came home & rested for a while, may go out for a walk soon & take some different pictures.

Henry's coming up tomorrow by a means of transport yet to be determined, guess we're going to go tux shopping.

Wouldn't you know, spent this morning thinking about smtp's lack of an authentication mechanism, later another half-assed nonstandard attempt to address that bit coworkers. Here's a tip, if you're going to require confirmation to accept mail, don't embed the request for it in the middle of a standard bounce message, users don't read those.

Work continues to be very busy, I continue to get very little sleep. Keeping little red book by my pillow to inspire me onward.

Went to Amherst for challah, on drive over, longish internal dialectic on the proper way to understand assertions of the self-evident truth of moral statements, I'll spare you the details, came to the perhaps unsurprising conclusion that they should probably be treated the same way one treats other assertions of self-evident truth.

Did some banking, went to Black Sheep for challah, college students sure make some surly retail workers, got challah, a couple napoleons, said, "Could I have a little bag?" College student said, "A 'little' bag?" I said, "Yeah, as opposed to a really big bag, one this stuff will fit into."

Decided to go for pizza after, one thing I'm finding I dislike about living alone is that I have very little opportunity to get pizza, guys behind counter seemingly having major problems understanding spoken English, weirdly, the guy in front of me in line with the severe speech impediment, him they understood just fine.

When one is trying very hard to understand something that's very difficult to understand, I think it's inevitable that one will sometimes mistake noticing a new aspect for coming to understand the whole picture, sometimes mistake the aspect for the whole picture, etc. Desire makes us see things, not just things that aren't there, the things that are there as well. If one stops trying to understand at one of these moments where a part has been mistaken for the whole, that's false consciousness, I suppose. Never been much of a one for religion.

Went & got apples, braeburns. Also got chips, salsa, going to make queso in a minute.

If one has a choice, one should stick to doing things that are fun or interesting, best if both. Had some plans that had great fun & interesting potential, others chose to turn them into something deeply unfun & uninteresting. Felt bad about not going along with that for a bit, try to be flexible, do what other people want. Don't feel particularly bad about it anymore, not really willing to be that flexible. Could have been, if given a chance, probably happier not.

My mom got paper she was fretting about accepted by The Journal of Investigative Dermatology or some such- hooray for my mom! Really happy to hear about it, actually. Nice when people get to do the worthwhile things they want to do.

Pretty horrifically beat, still need to go back into work in a bit, drifting off into computer screen. Belong in there, probably.

Apparently, it's "the premier journal dedicated to research in cutaneous biology." So they say, anyway.

While trying to fall asleep last night, was thinking, "The accuracy and speed of its calculations directly proportional to how severely it was beaten, kept in a highly insulated subbasement to prevent its screams disturbing the human residents, the thing, when allowed to sleep, dreamed of light."

Guess Peretz may be getting a little better, slept quietly beside me through the night.

Sunday, September 9, 2007

Having a 1/2 lemon 1/2 grapefruit 1/2 vodka soda, from the last of the quart bottles of Harmony Springs, going to move on to the little ones I bought for no good reason shortly, excited to have Sparkling Pep, hardly ever get it as it is unavailable in the quart size for some reason, also Virginia Dare Korker, huzzah.

Finished off apple crisp, should make that more often, apparently I'm fond of it.

Been trying not to feed P any solid food today, only problem with that is, it makes him even more eager than normal to find & eat strange things he finds in the bushes while on walks & we've been on something like eleven of those today.

I suggest you make a variation of what I'm making myself for dinner, I'm using Swiss chard in what I'm making, but it's kind of a pain to deal with, so I'm going to suggest you use baby spinach (they sell it in bags).

Put a pot of water on to boil for the pasta. Wash the spinach & roughly shred it. Mince the garlic. Cook the pasta according to directions on box. While pasta is cooking add 1/4 cup olive oil or butter to a large high sided pan on medium high heat. Once the oil is hot, add some red pepper flakes, maybe a little less than a teaspoon, stir them around a little, then add the minced garlic, stir that around for about a minute (if the pan is too hot, the garlic will burn & you will need to start over), then add your spinach, stirring as it becomes possible to do so. Once all the spinach was wilted, that part is done, remove it from the heat. Once pasta is done, toss with sauteed spinach & parmesan to taste.

That sound OK?

P.S. Oh, crap, editing this post, atypical- this would also be good with cannellini beans in it, if you want to do that, get a small can of those also, rinse well and add to pan before spinach, tossing till warm.

Peretz still seems to be feeling poorly, did just present his belly for scratches rather than just staying curled sadly in a ball. Hate seeing the ones I love sick, more than anything. Wouldn't have thought so, but apparently, that's hard for some people to understand.

A few weeks ago, a generous & well-meaning person bought me a rather large supply of generic unbleached #4 cone coffee filters. Not sure what they do exactly to make them so much more prone to backing up than the ones I normally use, but I think I've decided to give up on them, maybe keep them on hand for emergencies, think it's unlikely I'm ever going to get around to having 200 such emergencies, unfortunately. Dislike waste. Suppose the real waste was in making filters that don't work properly in the first place, the bastards.

On walk through Meadows, managed to get quite a lot of tiny flowers stuck in my hair. Extremely humid.

Little break from processing traumatic events has been helpful, they are now more or less fully processed. A lot better than some at processing traumatic events, both in the sense that I actually do process them and the sense that the processing has productive outcomes. Anyway, enough about that, in this forum anyway, feel free to write requesting full results.

Supposed to start putting up daily recipes for T on here, having trouble thinking of what to put up, not sure what vegetables are best in northern California at present, etc.

Continuing to be amazed that anyone, having known me for any length of time, could fail to anticipate the likely effects of my observing him treat his wife like a chattel on my attitudes toward him and their relationship. Should really learn to give people less credit.

Gave the web-based Flickr upload client a shot, already sorry I tried it, buggy as hell, making a mess.

Took a walk around Easthampton, took pictures, very hot out, think I may scrub other planned outdoor activities, stay in & cook. Got local hamburger from an alternate source, so meaty stuffed peppers are on again. Also planning to roast more eggplants, maybe make an apple crisp. If I could've found a cabbage, I'd be making borscht as well, maybe tomorrow.

Can't upload my photos easily as uploader app is returning error about outdated API key, it's the latest version of the app, so I imagine it's just more Web 2.0 flakiness, get with it people.

Friday, September 7, 2007

The mind of the sweet little old lady at whose house I just dined is slowly going, each time I see her she's a little more forgetful & disoriented. It's sad. That sort of thing scares me so much more than death.

A while ago, I felt a bit like my mind was going, mostly down to lack of sleep, I think. Anyway, it's back now.

Thinking on walk with P about how hard it was for me to accept that there wasn't necessarily anything I could do to prevent someone I care about doing horrifically self-destructive things to herself, being unable to accept that made me act like a jerk, so now I've accepted it, pretty much, anyway.

Guess pedestrian's a bit out the window for the moment, sometimes I'm in a hurry or want to get somewhere far away & go by car. Plane, even, sometimes.

Peretz still has a bit of a digestive disturbance, wonder what the matter is.

Unfortunately, it seems that I will likely still be in the process of attending dinner party while what seems likely to be the most photogenic event of the Northampton Cooperative Bank Balloon Festival at Look Park, the Balloon Glow, occurs. Description from the website so you can imagine, at least: " All balloons are inflated and stood up at dark. The balloonists light their tanks and light up the balloons to the beat of music and make a nice show." Pity.

Thinking about first person exceptionalism in moral principles, never had much hope for useful universal ones, can't say I think much of that, though. Lot of that sort of asymmetry going around in any case.

Thinking I may make at least the tomato sauce for my stuffed peppers now, planning to make a thin one with lime & habaneros, cook it lightly, puree, refrigerate. Need to do some dishes first.

T didn't get that job she wanted, kind of a drag, but she wanted some time off anyway, sure she'll get another one fairly soon.

Serio's was fresh out of local hamburger, going to make peppers vegetarian, I guess. Did have a couple of cheeseburgers grilled out in front of the store by the owner, presume the meat in those was of local provenance, didn't ask.

Ran into the people I'm having dinner with & for whom I was purchasing apples while waiting for my burgers- small, friendly town, pity about the stupid bastards who run it.

Spent some time on walk with Peretz wondering what suffering is like for people without much in the way of self-awareness or conscience. I guess, on the whole, I'm not much much for making animals suffer either.

Saw a baby fox in the dumping area, disappearing into the trees, the woods are alive with spirits.

Got a cup of coffee. Need to go get more coffee in a bit, also some things for my stuffed peppers, apples to bring to dinner party.

As with so many things, my having a guest at Henry's wedding depends upon the issuance of a visa. The non-issuance of one, actually, unusual.

Was it in The Great Dictator that a little kid does a rant about the need for passports? Some Chaplin movie, anyway. All the little fascisms, you'd think people would wise up. Don't know, maybe you wouldn't.

Anyway, "Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! With the love of humanity in your hearts! Don't hate! Only the unloved hate - the unloved and the unnatural!"

Total lack of an adult conception of responsibility, nothing he does is wrong, really something else. Kind of suspected, but not the extent of it, Christ. One less person whose opinion I need to take seriously, I guess. OK.

Had been fretting about getting some stuff of mine back, kind of a relief that it's no longer worth worrying about, might as well have been destroyed by animals.

Glad I'm able to accept that some things are my fault, can try to do better.

Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Went to a noise show at Mystery Train, guess Tim sort of talked me into it, dullest sort of noise music, Buddies were supposed to play but didn't, still had a pretty nice time. Managed to arrange a tentative date for skee ball excursion/art project. During one of the particularly boring parts, went across the street for a slice of pizza, three tiny, gawky guys, assume they were UMass freshmen, looked like high school students, had gotten a giant (say 18 x 30) Sicilian pie & were sitting in the window eating it, eyes alive with delight, protruding Adam's apples bobbing gleefully. Made me think of kids at Halloween eating whole bags of candy at one sitting.

There's a going away party for a person named Emily that I barely know happening at a bar down the street right now, can't decide if it would be funnier to go or to be inconspicuous by my absence. A beer might be good.

Finally getting around to eating some of that eggplant/red pepper dip I made the other day, it's quite good. Not actually as much of a fuckup as I sometimes think I am, surprisingly good at all sorts of things, actually. Ah well, back to being sad & unappreciated.

Lunching on the last of my soup & little red plums. It's nice. Going to make a hearty borscht later in the week I think.

P's licking the bowl.

Busy morning at work, can't remember half of what I was doing, repairing filesystems, redirecting mail, reconfiguring accounts, re, re, re, again & again. Going to go do some more fun sysadmin activities in Amherst after Peretz has had his walk.

Doing fairly well at that without really much trying, think that's better, actually. No real need to make a challenge out of it, unless you're really into the idea of your own virtue, for a month. Anyway, it's hard to think much of a virtue you're only able to indulge in while riding on others' backs.

Walking through dumping area with Peretz, wondering why anyone who knows me would think bullying me & ordering me about would be a good idea. Would think it was fairly obvious that these are things up with which I will not put, good for eliciting aggressively frustrating behavior, not much else. Asking nicely, on the other hand, most always works. 'Nicely' here means honestly and with a reasonable understanding of what's being asked, of course, not formally and/or politely. Not just how it is, it's good policy.

Went to Stop 'n' Shop, got limes, onions, bread for tomato sandwiches, dog biscuits, pita chips. Just after locating the pita chips, ran into Joel's niece Becky & someone I assume was her Italian boyfriend, so spacy from all the time with my head inside computer, I probably seemed heavily drugged. Should perhaps invest some time working on my impression management skills. Ho ho ho.

In further Jolly Green Giant news, got an email back from old college chum Chris Goodbar who I'd looked up & written to the other day. Sounds like he's doing well, lives in the woods, has a 2 year old kid & another on the way shortly, runs a kung fu school. Nice to hear from him, may try to stop in & see him if I ever get around to driving home for one holiday or another.

Peretz broke another leash. In an exciting twist, this time he broke the line not the retraction mechanism. This one lasted over a year at least (previous incident here), he used to break approximately two a year. Getting old. Giving me sad looks, walk wasn't as long as he'd have liked. Need to go get him more biscuits.

Been playing with last.fm, a bit surprised at how much it seems to break. Get better servers &/or sysadmins, folks.

In keeping with the social networking mood of the day, made slight adjustments to my myspace profile after removing a couple months' accumulation of spam. This last has, as usual, accelerated the arrival of new spam.

Look closed early for Labor Day, can't say I blame them, was rather looking forward to burger & pie, got some shots of where sign used to be, had vegetarian chao fan & fortune cookie as happy substitute. Photographing fortune cookie fortunes is quite challenging, anyway, "Should have is a favorite phrase for those looking for excuses."

Went & got farm share, have more tomatoes than I know what to do with, imagine I'll think of something. Decided I wanted fresh fruit to supplement fresh vegetables, went to Bashista, got peaches, little red plums, cooking apples, cranberry apple pie. Not sure what I'm going to do with cooking apples, imagine I'll think of something. Crisp, maybe?

Sunday, September 2, 2007

Feet got very sore, dusty on long walk through the corn fields. Really, really dusty actually, dirt roads were a lot like a beach, guess we could use some rain. Soaked my feet for a while, still a bit sore. The pictures make it all worthwhile.

Felt like I'd been neglecting Peretz with all the fair going, so set out on long walk with him through the cornfields to the river, past the airport, behind the fairgrounds. Took a little rest in Sheldon Field watching hip kids play kickball, Peretz played with a corgi. Took pictures of all that too, uploading those now.

Blandford Fair was very nice, coming to the conclusion that I like the small town ones better generally. Produced extensive multimedia documentation. A sample:

Also took a bunch more photos. Uploading those now. Producing a lot of data lately.

On drive down to fair, decided that I should really stop smoking, thought that I would have stopped some time ago had horrible things not happened & that horrible things were no reason for me to waste money on harming myself, quite the opposite actually, that I could reinvest the money saved in further evil works. Anyway, after about three hours of not smoking, found myself composing angry & hurtful missives in my head, as this isn't anything I want to be doing, in my head or elsewhere, went & bought some cigarettes. Don't say I never did anything for you.